Siri is about to move into your dashboard.
Video screenshot by Eric Mack/CNET

We might finally have a clearer idea of how Apple believes iOS should look in your car.

A video put together by noted developer Steven Troughton-Smith places an iPhone and in-car display side by side using what appears to be an iOS simulator that Troughton-Smith says is available in the "public, shipping version of iOS 7."

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At WWDC 2013, Apple announced plans to better integrate iOS into car dashboard screens, a holy grail of sorts for carmakers. Then last month the second version of an iOS 7.1 beta added mention of a "Car Display" setting that could foreshadow a release of iOS in the car is coming sooner than later.

New "connected car" technologies of all sorts were all over the floor at CES 2014, and it seems likely that we'll see the official rollout for iOS in the car in the coming months as well.

The video only shows Maps and how Siri and touch might be integrated into the system, but Troughton-Smith also had the following notes on apparent features of iOS in the car:

- Supports Multiple Resolutions
- Supports touchscreens (presumably single-touch?), hardware buttons, wheels and touch pads
- Does not support multitasking - car display will always show same current on-screen app as iPhone (which can be locked/asleep)
- Whitelisted to specific Apple apps - no public API for developers [yet?]
- Has no keyboard UI - voice recognition as input
- UI clearly subject to change
- Missing functionality in video is due to iOS Simulator not containing all the stock iOS apps

The conventional wisdom for some time has been that the longer development cycle for vehicles (measured in years, versus months for mobile devices) is what has kept Apple from getting a native version of iOS into the dashboard, but I have to wonder if they just had to make sure all the bugs were finally worked out of Apple Maps.

Take a look at the video and let us know what you think about the future of iOS in your car.

About the author

Crave freelancer Eric Mack is a writer, radio producer, and podcaster based in Taos, N.M., but he lives in Google+. He's also managing editor of Crowdsourcing.org and has written e-books on both Alaska and Android. E-mail Eric.
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